Eunyoung Choi

Uśmiech Shoko

쇼코의 미소

Choi Eunyoung

In crisp, unembellished prose, Choi Eunyoung paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In 'A Song from Afar', a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, travelling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In 'Secret', the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson - writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience - Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.

Shoko's Smile

stephanie

If I didn't change, if I didn't improve, I would be erased from this world.

You had to be a go-getter in your twenties more than any other time, where being a go-getter meant building a safe career as quickly as possible or die trying.

Some people break up after a big fight, but there are also people who drift incrementally apart until they can't face each other anymore. The latter stay longer in your memory.

an interesting note about friendships & finding a balance between 'consideration' & honesty...🤔

The attitudes they adopted out of consideration for each other slowly drove them apart...

'I blamed myself, thinking he'd gone out to die because I was hurting over his hurting. I shouldn't have let on no matter how sad I was, I shouldn't have cried.'

𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮

"Memory is a talent. You were born with it," my grandma told me when I was young. "But it's a painful one. So, try to make yourself a little less sensitive. Be extra cautious with happy memories, my dear. Happy memories seem like jewels when in fact they're burning charcoals. You'll hurt yourself if you hold on to them, so let go and dust off your hands. Child, they are no gift."

We had been politely covering each other's eyes. In the end, I took my hand off his eyes first, and we split up cleanly. That farewell proved there was no love left between us because the last moment of lovers was never supposed to be so clean. We had simply moved from one dot to another.

People locked their hearts at some point in their lives, as if everyone had agreed to do so. Then they made acquaintances outside of those locks, with people who would never hurt them or be hurt by them.

If you couldn't share someone's pain, if you didn't have the guts to survive a difficult stretch with them, it was better to choose heartlessness over half-hearted affection.

That's what I thought all this time. That there were people you parted with whom you could see again genially, and relationships you could smile about regardless of how they ended, just from the memory of them. Yet some partings you never wanted to remember. even after a long time, because they lingered as heartbreaks.

"Your dad and I can't seem to communicate,' Mom used to tell me. Mom and Dad acted as if the other were invisible. Even when they ate or watched television or went for a drive. They probably never knew how much that hurt me as a kid.

Dreams. They were a mirage, blotched with ugly feelings like vanity, ambition, need for recognition, spite.

I used to think they were like grandfather clocks that had stopped ticking, that gathered dust and faded in color each year. Like people who had neither a goal nor the will to change, whose lives had come to a grinding halt.

...the line between leaving and being left often blurred.

I realised later that the ridiculous things Thuy said or did were a trick used by mature, thoughtful kids. Having become adults long before their peers, they performed the part of the most clueless, innocent child. They took it upon themselves to play the carefree fool so that you could lay down your pains through them, forget your burdens for a moment and laugh.

Some lovers are like friends, while some friends are like lovers.

It seemed to me that the strangest of strangers was family.

A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers. In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar," a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret," the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson--writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience--Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.

Stories

bianca

She felt a certain respect for every elderly person she saw. Because to live a long life was to see your loved ones go before you and get left behind for a long time, to suffer that ordeal then once again stand up and eat and walk your path alone.

The tears shed by the twenty-five-year-old Sunbae at the roundabout crosswalk that day might not have been rage, but the accumulation of her loneliness.

The thing about children is, they believe and accept everything an adult says. They live with those words for the rest of their lives. You are nothing. You are nothing, my father would tell me. You’re a useless brat. A big, useless brat. I didn’t want to be seen, but my body kept developing. I walked around with a slouch hoping that hunching my shoulders would make me look a bit smaller, but it was no use. I wanted to disappear. That’s why when a Russian man proposed to me, I married him and came here like a runaway. I couldn’t leave him even when he treated me with contempt or swore at me for no reason. I must’ve thought he’d done me the huge favor of marrying me when I was nothing.

I roll up the notebook, place it in the hole I have chipped into the ice, and push it deep inside. It slides down without protest, plummeting into the ice. It will not decompose for at least ten thousand years. I don’t want to be born again and again over that span of time. Let those memories leave me and latch on to the ice.

Their tears held a sweet fondness for those who left. The rare joy, as an adult, of having liked people and lived among them in unconditional friendship. The joy of existing together in that time, a time that could neither last nor be repeated. Their tears grieved for a time devoid of loneliness.

I wish you the blessing of oblivion, and that you will find the strength to exist moment by moment.

A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson - writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience - Eun-young Choi is a writer to watch.

sani

“I couldn’t stand her love, which did not reject even the ugliest of my faces. I couldn’t stand it because I had been afraid of being loved from the beginning.”

Shoko's smile is a collection of seven short stories featuring the complexities of human relationships, especially female friendships and how they evolve over time. 

i’m in so much awe by the intricacies of the women relationships through time. each of the seven stories feels like a novel on their own and i’m so bummed up. need a decade to get over it all. love, love, love Choi Eunyoung's writing so much

lea.

★★★ stars

my favourite short story from the book definitely goes to 'hanji and youngju'. in the story, the narrator, a young korean woman, develops an intense friendship with a kenyan man she meets while both are volunteering at a monastery in france. at some point, their relationship goes wrong, and he stops speaking to her. but despite the narrator’s best efforts, she cannot figure out the cause of their estrangement, what she might have said or done to upset or offend her friend. the reader can’t, either. instead, we are left with the gut-punch of that lost intimacy and no tidy way to reassure ourselves that the same thing wouldn’t happen to us under comparable circumstances (washington independent, 2021)

reference: https://www.washingtonindependentrevi...

Isabella 

I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH . a collection of stories about experiences of women in south korea — how they go through about their relationships with others while dealing with grief, trauma, and more. when i read collections of stories, i would usually forget one or two, but the stories in this book really captured my heart. it was so raw and so beautifully written. it explored things that happen in real life that are usually not talked about or brushed off; very true to life. one of my favorite books!! a must-read!!

my favourite short story from the book definitely goes to 'hanji and youngju'. in the story, the narrator, a young korean woman, develops an intense friendship with a kenyan man she meets while both are volunteering at a monastery in france. at some point, their relationship goes wrong, and he stops speaking to her. but despite the narrator’s best efforts, she cannot figure out the cause of their estrangement, what she might have said or done to upset or offend her friend. the reader can’t, either. instead, we are left with the gut-punch of that lost intimacy and no tidy way to reassure ourselves that the same thing wouldn’t happen to us under comparable circumstances (washington independent, 2021).

https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/index.php/bookreview/shokos-smile-stories

★★★ stars

my favourite short story from the book definitely goes to 'hanji and youngju'. in the story, the narrator, a young korean woman, develops an intense friendship with a kenyan man she meets while both are volunteering at a monastery in france. at some point, their relationship goes wrong, and he stops speaking to her. but despite the narrator’s best efforts, she cannot figure out the cause of their estrangement, what she might have said or done to upset or offend her friend. the reader can’t, either. instead, we are left with the gut-punch of that lost intimacy and no tidy way to reassure ourselves that the same thing wouldn’t happen to us under comparable circumstances (washington independent, 2021).

reference: https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/index.php/bookreview/shokos-smile-stories

I rarely re-read books but I'd definitely re-read this one. I wish I'd read this when I have more knowledge and context about the cultural references that affected these women's lives. 

I didn't know why I dnf-ed this book back in February. Anyway, I'm interested to see how I would reflect about these stories when I get a little older because this definitely made me feel things as a 21 year old. 

All in all, 3/5 ⭐

risa

i'm glad i took my time reading this instead of ingesting it all in one go. the last story bring me to tears, the sobbing and hiccuping type and i loved every second of it

Shaz

beautiful, understated collection with some stories I'll hold close to my heart 🫶🏽

A beautiful and poignant collection of stories.

In crisp, unembellished prose, Choi Eunyoung paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In 'A Song from Afar', a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, travelling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In 'Secret', the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson - writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience - Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch. Translated by Sung Ryu.

mercy

the secret made me bawl also hanji and youngju deserved a full length novel but the other stories fell a bit flat

i cried in public on the train reading this book

by far one of my favourite short story collections <3

mayra

“I’d lived for over four decades without knowing you—where were you in all that time? Where’d you come from to tell me these marvelous things?”

i could fill 739294 notebooks with quotes from this

daisy

i dont usually like short stories collection but this one is a masterpiece and i was rooting for every characters in each stories / 4.5 stars

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